Q&A with producer Marla Manning

Published 2:15 am Thursday, March 12, 2020

Who: Silent Echo Theater Company founder Marla Manning is the mind behind the fifth annual “Now You’re Talking,” featuring eight one-act plays by local, national and international playwrights. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at The Belfry, 302 E. Main Ave., Sisters. Tickets are $18, $15 for students and seniors in advance at bendticket.com, or $20 and $17 at the door. Contact: silentechotheatercompany.org.

Note: One of the plays, Adam Szurich’s “Slow Dating,” will be filmed rather than live. Directed by Bend’s Julee Vadnais, and filmed by Jesse Locke, the short film stars Jess Walton James, who has played Jill Abbott on “The Young and the Restless” for more than 30 years.

Q: How do you go about tracking down plays for this? Do you reach out to playwrights?

A: I do. We have gotten some that are local now as well, but yeah, I’ve always put out something. I put out something on Facebook, I’ve put out something to previous people that we’ve worked with before. … (I’m) from New York, I’ve lived in Los Angeles, and I lived in Connecticut for years, and I also lived in London, (so) I actually put it out to people who I know all over the place. We did end up with an international writer (from Australia) this year. Adam Szudrich wrote a couple of the plays that we’re doing.

Q: And you have a few local playwrights as well?

A: We do. Beverly Allen wrote the play “I Know Who You Are,” and (in it) the father figure has Alzheimer’s. All the plays are Oregon premieres. For the local playwrights, they’re world premieres. … A lot of the stuff we’re doing is poignant. It deals with very timely stuff. (Former Bend resident) Patricia Del Ruth … wrote “Ice Ice Baby.” It’s actually about an (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent interviewing a Honduras man who illegally crossed the border. The actors are Amy Anderton and Gary Fulkerson. … Since Patricia doesn’t live here anymore, I always say that there are two and a half playwrights from the area. Pat Kruis is from Redmond, and she wrote a play called “The Lottery,” which is also really interesting. People come to the door and say, “You need to come with us.” It seems like it’s pretty ominous, but it has a really interesting twist at the end.

Q: Yeah?

A: And then we have some really, really funny ones. “Therapy Dog” is literally set in an airport, and this guy has a little patch of fur and he’s like “Touch my head.” The other guy’s like, “What are you talking about?” … It’s just really funny and irreverent.

Q: Are you getting close to securing a space (for Silent Echo)?

A: It’s not easy in Sisters, as you might know … but we’re working on it. Until we have our own space, we can’t do multiple weekends.

Q: Do you have a space in mind?

A: I’m not positive yet. We had a space at one point, potentially, but again whatever space you want to use, it has to be converted. … There’s a warehouse right now that we’re talking to the landlord, and we’re hoping. … The goal is for us to be an all-live performance theater, and so we’re not allowing not having a space to prevent us from doing things. It just slows us down a little bit, because it’s easier when you know it’s your own place and you have control.

Q: Do you envision having a full season of plays if you do secure a space?

A: Yes, but the goal for me is to do four to five plays a year, not seven or eight like a lot of the other theaters do. You run them for a little longer, maybe four weeks for the plays. … We’re still in flux, but the most stable things about us is we’ve done our show at The Belfry for five years, and we’ve gotten new actors each time. … We have 22 different actors. We have seven different directors. We have six different playwrights.

— David Jasper, The Bulletin